The Vancouver Sun reports that pretty much, across the board and across the border, Canadian sales rose. GM’s sale rose 11 percent year on year, Ford’s sales rose 8 percent and is now within a whisker of taking the number one slot from General Motors. Honda’s sales grew 14 percent. As did Nissan’s at 4.5 percent. And Hyundai-Kia who reports rises of 8.6 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Even the smaller players had reasons to celebrate. VW went up 21.5 percent. Mitsubishi has a stonkingly good month with sales rising, YOY, by 27.2 percent. Even Volvo’s sales grew 13.9 percent. Yep. Life is good, north of the border. Except for one. (Read More…)

In the car world, the BRIC countries have already got their institutional market leaders. That’s how quick these markets are moving. General Motors and Volkswagen have an iron grip on the Chinese market, Suzuki and Hyundai have India in their palms. Fiat is king in Brazil. But Russia is still anybody’s game. Well, Renault and Nissan want to change that. (Read More…)

As U.S. car sales are forecast to be growing once again, spare a thought for those less fortunate than you. Namely, those poor people in Europe. While you’re the U.S. market is expanding, sales in the Old Country are a big NSFW mess. (Read More…)

Today is election day, the time when good Americans process all the negative advertising they’ve seen over the previous months and decide on the lesser of several evils. But the best thing about election day isn’t the sense of civic pride or even the knowledge that you’ll be able to avoid political ads for at least a few months afterwords. The greatest thing about elections is that, for one moment, the nation gets a snapshot of itself, a picture of what really matters to us as citizens. So this seems as good a time as any to ask you, TTAC’s Best And Brightest, how you feel about the potency of the Auto Bailout as an issue. After all, the bailout is currently caught in limbo; impossible to undo, at yet still far from resolution, good or bad. If anything, the latest indicators show that the GM bailout was fairly compromised, in the sense that the new company will be worth about what the taxpayers put into it (in the $50b range).

But does it matter at all how much taxpayers get out of GM’s (and eventually Chrysler’s) IPO? And if so, is it important that GM repay the taxpayers completely, or do the bailed-out firms need only to be sustainable for a certain period to make the bailout a success? As I see it, the question isn’t so much one of politics. After all, the rescue is hardly the definitive political issue for any citizen not directly affected by it (a relatively small group compared to the American electorate). The real issue seems to be whether political opposition to the bailout will affect sales at GM and Chrysler, and whether achieving certain financial or taxpayer payback goals will eliminate any such political impacts on sales. Do the bailouts affect your relationship with GM and Chrysler, and if so, what do you need to see in order to leave the bailout in the past?

More than any other mainline automaker, Nissan has bet heavily on electric vehicles penetrating the mass market within a reasonable time period. Whether or not that gamble will pay off remains very much to be seen, but the firm’s post-Leaf EV plans are less than entirely inspiring. Yes, there will be an Infiniti version of the Leaf for the US market (and possibly an EV delivery van for Europe), but after that, Nissan says its next EV will be a retreat to the golf cart-style Neighborhood Electric Vehicles that spread rapidly when gas prices spike two years ago before dropping off the map. Called the “New Mobility Concept,” this open-air Nissan (the Renault version is called the Twizzy) will be faster than a NEVs, with a top speed of 47 mph planned. Range is also better than the typical lead-acid battery-powered NEV, with about 60 miles of range planned. Still, this is a huge step backwards from the Leaf, and it speaks to a basic lack of confidence in the Leaf’s radical mainstreaming effort for EVs. Given how much Nissan has riding on the Leaf, that’s a troubling sign indeed. [via Automotive News [sub]]

A lawsuit against Mazda is moving to the United States Supreme Court, reports Bloomberg, challenging whether automakers should have been required to install shoulder belts in all of its seats prior to current regulations requiring the improved belting systems took effect in 2007. The case centers on a 2002 accident in which Than Williams was killed when a Jeep Wrangler hit her family’s 1993 Mazda MPV. The Williams MPV had only lap belts because shoulder belts weren’t required by federal law until 2007. A California court has already barred the lawsuit from coming forward, arguing that federal regulations supersede any local rulings, and that then-legal seatbelts should protect manufacturers from personal injury liability. However a recent case casts some doubt on the precedents in the Mazda case…

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OK, so the EMAV PRU (Electric Motors and Vehicle Company Power Regeneration Unit) isn’t expected to go on sale until sometime next year, but it’s one curious approach to the “range anxiety” problem that caused GM to develop the Volt as a range-extended EV rather than a pure battery-only EV. The PRU takes a simple concept, a trailer that can both store goods and generate 25kWh of electricity from a 750cc diesel engine in order to extend range, and makes it considerably more complicated than it needs to be. For one thing, it’s self-propelled, necessitating on-board lithium-ion batteries, as well as an electric drive unit.

As a result, the projected pricetag comes to a prohibitive $15,000, and the weight reaches an EV range-sapping 1,220 lbs. And for all that, wouldn’t a $15k hatchback make a better “range extender” than this cumbersome trailer? On the other hand, a trailer like this just might work as a rental item, offering a portable generator as well as range extension that its makers say will work with any electric car. But would something like this be more appealing as a simplified, lighter unit (non-self-propelled), or will add-on range extension always struggle to offer more for money than having a gas car as a compliment to an electric car? Given that American families typically have several cars anyway, the answer would appear to be yes… [via GM-volt.com]

Who wants a 1996 Chrysler LHS? The last car to ever impersonate an Iacocca inspired Chrysler New Yorker glided down the auction lane in pure anonymous bliss. The Mazda 3 behind it had already hooked all the dealers looking for some sub-prime finance fodder and hey, I knew that the 3’s transmission was toast. I was not in the mood to have a dogfight with half the dealers at this sale. My job was to pick my battles and find the dealer queens, but which ones?

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The 1963 Pontiac was the very crest of the wave that swept the Excitement brand to glorious heights in the sixties. The upwelling first appeared out of seemingly nowhere in 1959. It continued to build momentum, year by year, but no one could have imagined how high it would peak in 1963. Anyone alive between the ages of five and eighty-five at the time remembers it well: the Pontiac waves seized the land, and one after another followed the ’63 until it died down again. The choice was to surf it, or be inundated. The latter mainly applied to the competition.

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Numbers are not in yet, and many makers won’t report until tomorrow, but it already looks like October was the best in 14 months, if Bloomberg has it right. What’s more, buyers are willing to cough up more for 2011 model-year vehicles. (Read More…)

As Automotive News [sub] reports, GM has gone ahead and finalized the 500 dealer cuts that made up its bankruptcy-bailout-era dealer cull, despite resistance from some 22 members of the US House of Representatives. And despite the congressional pressure, a damning SIGTARP report, and an ongoing criminal investigation, GM hasn’t changed its tune about cutting dealers, telling AN [sub] that delaying dealer cuts

would only divert our collective attention at a critical time and would ignore the independent decisions of arbitrators and individual settlement agreements between GM and its dealers

Meanwhile, just what affect has the dealer cull had on surviving dealerships? Are they thriving? Well, not exactly…
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The folks at the F1 circus are getting desperate. Car makers are evacuating F1 as if it’s about to be wiped out by a hurricane. Honda gone. BMW gone. Toyota gone. Hyundai said “are you kidding us?” (Or Korean words to that effect.) And now someone, obviously on serious mind altering substances, thought they could get Volkswagen to come and play. (Read More…)

Well, there’s nothing quite like being wrong, is there? Exactly a week ago I registered my (somewhat hesitant) support for Chevy’s new tagline, “Chevy Runs Deep,” and though I still believe that the tagline itself is better than anything else GM’s marketers have dreamed up in a while, I probably should have waited for the brand’s ads to come up out before weighing in. After all, any good (or good enough) idea is only as good as its execution… and these ads really don’t seem to move the game past some of Chevrolet’s previous cornball ad efforts. The main ad in the series (above) is as bland as an Impala’s interior, and does nothing to inspire respect for Chevy in contemporary (read: post-bailout) terms. Can “the strength of the nation” be found in every Chevrolet? If so, does that strength refer to something other than the government money that kept Chevrolet from the scrapheap of history? Instead of inspiring a bold approach, it seems that the “Don’t call it Chevy” moment simply pushed Chevy’s advertising back into gauzy pseudo-patriotism of its recent past. But don’t take it from me… hit the jump for a sampling of the latest Chevy Runs Deep ads.
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The city of Houston, Texas sought to keep secret all detailed information about the performance of its red light camera program on the eve of an election that will decide their fate. Yesterday, Paul Kubosh, co-founder of Citizens Against Red Light Cameras, filed suit in Harris County District Court seeking a court order compelling the release of accident data at intersections equipped with automated ticketing machines. Voters head to the polls today to decide whether or not the city will be allowed to continue using the devices.

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Nobody knows for sure how many automakers China has. The guesses were somewhere between 60 and 120. Now we have it official: It’s “more than 130 big and small companies in 27 provinces,” writes China Daily. But it looks like a lot of them need to seek other employment. After having made consolidation noises for more than a year, the Chinese government is about to bring their car companies down to a manageable number. (Read More…)